Television shows and motion picture features are very often dubbed to several different foreign languages. This process involves sending the picture along with the music and effects (M&E) tracks to various audio post production facilities around the world where the foreign language actor's voices are mixed with the M&E to produce the new foreign language tracks for the shows. Often these mixes are done in multiple parts with multiple tracks, such as stereo, Dolby Pro Logic (Lt/Rt), or discrete 5.1 channel sound.
Those new foreign language tracks are then sent back to a post production facility whose job it is to edit the various parts together and time the audio to the picture so that the actual foreign language versions of the show or motion picture can be made.
Existing techniques to conform these files have a number of disadvantages. The most significant disadvantage is that most techniques are manual, requiring an operator to open files and manually slide each of the foreign language tracks around to match them to the guide track. The manual process is tedious, slow, and is prone to errors.